Workable

What Is Workable?

Nikos Moraitakis and Spyros Magiatis built the first version of Workable in Athens in 2012, watching small and medium businesses lose candidates to slow, email-based hiring processes that enterprise ATS tools were too complicated and expensive to replace. Their answer was a self-serve applicant tracking system designed from the outset for teams without a dedicated HR technology team. Fourteen years later, Workable serves more than 27,000 companies from a London headquarters, has raised $84.6 million including a $50 million Series C, and has added AI-powered sourcing, structured interview frameworks, and a deep integration ecosystem to what began as a simple pipeline manager.

The founder backstory matters because it shaped the product's character. Workable was not designed by an enterprise software team that added a self-serve tier later. It was designed by people who thought SMB hiring should be as simple as posting a job and managing candidates in a visual pipeline, then grew the platform outward from that core simplicity. That origin shapes how the product feels today: genuinely usable without a consultant, with a 15-day trial that includes the full Standard plan feature set and no credit card required to start.

Key Features

AI-Powered Sourcing

Workable's AI sourcing feature searches a database of 400 million candidate profiles to surface passive candidates who match the skills and experience in an open role. The feature operates on Standard and Premier plans and provides a monthly credit allocation — Premier users get unlimited sourcing. Unlike LinkedIn Recruiter, which charges separately and offers only its own network, Workable's sourcing crosses multiple data sources and integrates directly into the hiring pipeline so matched candidates can be moved straight to outreach from within the same interface where active applicants are managed.

The quality of matches varies by role seniority and specialisation, as it does with any sourcing tool, but the integration with the pipeline means less context switching than managing separate sourcing and tracking workflows.

Structured Interview Kits

Workable includes a library of structured interview kits covering over 800 job roles, each with pre-built competency questions and a scorecard for evaluators. Interviewers complete scorecards within the platform, and hiring managers see aggregated ratings across candidates for direct comparison. This structure is one of the meaningful differences between Workable and lighter-touch tools like an in-built job board: it brings consistency to evaluation decisions that reduces both bias and post-process disagreements about which candidate performed best.

GDPR Compliance Tools

For companies hiring across EU member states, Workable has built GDPR compliance features into the standard platform: candidate data deletion and anonymisation, consent management for storing candidate data beyond the hiring process, a Data Processing Agreement available for download, and access control that limits which team members can view sensitive candidate information. ISO 27001:2022 and SOC 2 Type II certifications cover the underlying platform security.

These are not features companies should have to build themselves through workarounds, and their presence in a mid-market ATS is worth noting explicitly.

Integration Ecosystem

Workable integrates with 70+ tools covering every stage of the hiring and post-hire workflow: LinkedIn, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter for sourcing; Calendly for interview scheduling; Slack and Microsoft Teams for team notifications; BambooHR, HiBob, and Rippling for HRIS handoff after a hire; DocuSign for offer signatures. The Premier plan includes API access for custom integrations. For most SMBs and mid-market teams, the native integration list eliminates the need for custom development.

Careers Page Builder

Every plan includes a customisable careers page that can be embedded on a company's existing website or hosted on a Workable subdomain. The page auto-populates with live job listings and can be styled to match brand colours and include company content sections. For smaller companies without a dedicated web team, this removes the need to maintain a separate careers site.

Pricing

Workable uses plan-based subscription pricing rather than per-seat or per-hire:

• Starter — $149/month (annual billing): Core ATS with pipeline management, job board posting, and careers page. Covers teams making a small number of hires per quarter.
• Standard — $299/month (annual billing): Adds AI sourcing credits, advanced reporting, and HRIS integrations. The most common tier for growing teams with consistent hiring.
• Premier — $599/month (annual billing): Unlimited AI sourcing, API access, and a dedicated customer success manager. Designed for high-volume recruiting teams.

Annual billing saves approximately 20% versus monthly. Video interviews and SMS candidate texting are paid add-ons, meaning the Standard plan's real cost can exceed $477/month when both are included. The 15-day free trial covers the full Standard feature set.

EU Compliance and Privacy

Workable holds ISO 27001:2022 and ISO 27017 certifications alongside SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 reports. The platform is GDPR and UK GDPR compliant, with built-in tools for candidate consent management, data deletion requests, and anonymisation of declined candidates. A DPA is available for download.

Data is hosted in EU-compliant data centres. For companies subject to GDPR's right-to-erasure requirements, the automated anonymisation workflow means Workable removes identifiable candidate data without requiring manual database operations.

Workable also complies with CCPA and CPRA for US-based companies, making it suitable for organisations hiring on both sides of the Atlantic.

Who It's Best For

If you are an SMB or mid-market company making between 10 and 200 hires per year and need a full-featured ATS without a six-month enterprise implementation, Workable is one of the strongest options in its class. The self-serve setup, 15-day trial, and structured trial-to-paid onboarding mean most teams can be hiring through the platform within a day.

If you are a company running a structured hiring programme at scale (500+ hires per year) with complex reporting requirements, dedicated headcount for ATS administration, and a need for deep custom integrations, Greenhouse or Lever will offer more configuration depth. They cost significantly more and take longer to implement, but the flexibility matches the complexity.

If you need HRIS, payroll, and ATS in a single platform, Workable is not that product. HiBob, Personio, or BambooHR include ATS functionality within a broader HR suite, though Workable's standalone ATS is more mature on the recruiting side than any of those.

The Verdict

Workable has made a well-executed transition from a simple pipeline tool to a full-featured ATS with AI sourcing, structured interviewing, compliance tooling, and a wide integration ecosystem. The Greek founding team's original instinct, that mid-market hiring should not require an enterprise implementation, still shapes the product: it is genuinely self-serve, the trial is honest, and the onboarding does not require a vendor-led professional services engagement.

Its limitations are real: add-on pricing inflates the base cost, the reporting falls short of Greenhouse at enterprise scale, and the tiered plan structure can force premature upgrades for fast-growing teams. For the 27,000 companies using it, and for the SMB and mid-market segment it was built for, it remains one of the better European-founded hiring platforms available.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Workable GDPR compliant?

Yes. Workable is ISO 27001:2022 and SOC 2 Type II certified and provides a full suite of GDPR compliance tools: a Data Processing Agreement, candidate data deletion and anonymisation workflows, consent management for storing candidate data beyond the active hiring process, and access controls limiting which team members can view sensitive information. The platform complies with both GDPR and UK GDPR, and also meets CCPA/CPRA requirements. Data is processed in EU-compliant data centres.

How does Workable pricing work?

Workable charges a monthly or annual subscription based on plan tier: Starter ($149/mo), Standard ($299/mo), or Premier ($599/mo) on annual billing. Annual billing saves roughly 20% versus monthly. Plans are not explicitly per-job-slot in the published pricing, but upgrade prompts appear based on active hiring volume and users. Video interviews and SMS candidate texting are paid add-ons that can push the Standard plan's real cost to approximately $477/month when both are activated.

How does Workable compare to Greenhouse and Lever?

Workable is designed for SMBs and growing mid-market teams that want a full-featured ATS they can set up and use without consultants or a dedicated ATS administrator. Greenhouse and Lever target larger organisations that need more granular reporting, deeper workflow customisation, and enterprise-grade configuration, at significantly higher price points and longer implementation cycles. Workable is faster to deploy and easier to maintain; Greenhouse is more configurable for complex structured hiring at scale. BambooHR bundles ATS features within a broader HRIS, but its recruiting module is less mature.

Where is Workable headquartered, and where is data hosted?

Workable is headquartered in London, UK, with its founding team and significant engineering presence in Athens, Greece, where the company was originally built in 2012. It also has offices in Boston, Massachusetts. Data is hosted in EU-compliant data centres. Workable holds ISO 27001:2022, ISO 27017, SOC 2 Type II, and SOC 3 certifications. A Data Processing Agreement is available for GDPR compliance.

Does Workable have AI sourcing?

Yes. Workable's AI sourcing feature searches a database of more than 400 million candidate profiles to surface passive candidates matching an open role's requirements. It is available on Standard and Premier plans with a monthly credit allocation. Premier includes unlimited AI sourcing. Workable also uses AI to generate job descriptions, suggest interview questions from its library of 800+ role-specific kits, and screen applicants. AI sourcing operates within the ATS pipeline, so matches can be moved directly to outreach without switching tools.